NEW DELHI: The Anil Agarwal promoted Vedanta Alumina's plans for sourcing bauxite from the Niyamgiri hills in the Kalahandi district of Orissa will have to wait.

The environment ministry has set up a four-member committee headed by National Advisory Council member NC Saxena. The other three members of the committee are Dr S Parasuraman, director, Tata Institute of Social Sciences; retired IFS officer Promode Kant, and Amita Baviskar, associate professor at Delhi's Institute of Economic Growth.

In an order issued on Tuesday, the ministry made it clear that a final decision on the application for diversion of forest land cannot be taken without further examination.

With a deadline of July 29, the committee has to ascertain whether the Forest Rights Act has been properly implemented, and to determine the impact of the project on the livelihood, culture and material welfare of the Dongria Kondhs, a notified primitive tribal group, and on the local wildlife and biodiversity. The report will be submitted to director general of forests P J Dilip Kumar and R H Khwaja, special secretary in the environment ministry.

This in effect means that the Saxena committee will revisit the issues that were studied by the three-member team appointed by the forest advisory committee in January.

The environment ministry has been under considerable pressure to grant a final forest clearance to the project. Sources indicated that by appointing the Saxena committee to go over ground that has been already covered, the environment minister has sought to buy time to convince the PMO on the inadvisability of the project.

The pressure on the ministry was on account of a clean chit given to the project on violation of forest laws and its impact on wildlife given by a study team sent by the forest advisory committee in January. The team comprised three members, each responsible for studying for one aspect of the issue.

The report on violations of the Forest Conservation Act was prepared by the chief conservator of forests (central) J K Tewari. Former additional director general (wildlife) at the Wildlife Institute of India Vinod Rishi prepared the report on the project's impact on local wildlife. The study on the impact on the local population was conducted by Usha Ramanathan, an independent legal researcher.

The respective reports by Messrs Tewari and Rishi gave the project a clean chit. Ms Ramanathan was the only member of the team who argued against the project. She questioned the Orissa state government's claim that the Forest Rights Act had been fully implemented.

Ms Ramanathan's report gave a clear warning that the project would destroy the local primitive tribal group, Dongria Kondh. According to her, this 7,000-odd strong tribal group would not be able to make the transition from a forest based lifestyle to the one that will be necessitated should the mining project take off.

While forest advisory committee accepted the reports, the ministry was not persuaded to completely accept the recommendations by Messrs Tewari and Rishi. It particularly had a problem with the manner in which Mr Rishi conducted the study.

Interestingly, despite reservations the environment ministry did not commission fresh studies on forest and wildlife issues. On the tribal front, it deftly passed the ball back to the Orissa government asking it to take the matter up with tribal affairs ministry.

However, what the environment ministry did was to hold a final clearance. The decision to withhold clearance was in line with the ministry's July 2009 circular, stating: "State/UT governments, where process of settlement of rights under the Forest Rights Act is yet to begin, are required to enclose evidences supporting that settlement of rights under Forest Rights Act, 2006 will be initiated and completed before the final approval for the proposals."

This stance came under attack from the PMO and the company, who argued that the environment ministry's jurisdiction was limited to forest and wildlife matters. The project had been given an "in-principle" clearance in 2008, by Mr Jairam Ramesh's predecessor.

Mr Ramesh, who has been objecting to the concept of in-principle clearances, had told Parliament that "had the tribal act been in place, the chances are that this project (Vedanta) would not have been cleared in the first place." In the past, he has repeatedly stressed that the project would be given forest clearance only after all tribal rights have been settled.